VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
VOWELS IN STANDARD AUSTRIAN GERMAN - Acoustics ...
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Sylvia Moosmüller<br />
Sentence 065:<br />
Das Paar hat-t-e sich in Leipe, einer<br />
DEF:N:SG AUX couple AUX-PST-3S REFL:3S ILL Leipe <strong>IN</strong>DEF-F:SG:DAT<br />
klein-en Stadt in Deutschland, nieder-ge-lass-en.<br />
small-F:SG:DAT town ILL Germany VPREF-PP-settle-PP<br />
In principle, the sentence is designed in an iambic rhythm which demands a weak node<br />
on the first syllable of “hatte”, which is nevertheless supposed to be stronger than the<br />
definite article “das”, due to lexical primary stress on the first syllable, and a weak node<br />
on the second syllable of “Deutschland”, which, as a compositum, might nevertheless<br />
retain some degree of stress. “Stadt”, being the head of the adposition, receives less<br />
prominence than “Paar”. The fourth syllable of “niedergelassen” has a secondary stress,<br />
and it can be assumed that the vowel is slightly stronger than the one in “Deutschland”.<br />
Therefore, as concerns the vowel /a/, the hierarchy of stresses should be as follows:<br />
Paar > Stadt > niedergelassen > Deutschland > hatte > das<br />
With respect to the modification of spectral shape, F1 is supposed to gradually decrease<br />
with decreasing prosodic strength, F2 and F3 are supposed to gradually rise.<br />
As regards F1, the vowel /A/ in “Paar” received the highest value by all speakers.<br />
Five speakers (sp180, so129, sp082, sp012, and sp126) attributed a lower or at least<br />
equal 154 F2 value to the vowel /A/ in “Paar”. Sp127 had a lower F2 in “Deutschland”.<br />
Four speakers (sp180, sp129, sp126, sp127) exposed a lower or equal F3 in “Paar”.<br />
Sp082 attributed lower F3 values to the vowels /A/ of “Stadt” and “niedergelassen”.<br />
Sp012 had a lower F3 value in “Stadt” and “hatte”. In sum, every person attributed a<br />
higher F1 and either a lower F2 or a lower F3 to the vowel /A/ in “Paar”. Therefore, this<br />
vowel received highest prominence by all speakers. This result corroborates the<br />
observations made by Wagner (2002) that speakers show a high agreement both on the<br />
placing and the modelling of primary stress. Moreover, as regards the vowel /A/, F1<br />
seems to be of higher relevance for modelling stress than either F2 or F3.<br />
154 Means in this case that the negative z-score (= F2 is lower in another vowel /A/ than in the<br />
vowel /A/ of “Paar”) ≤ 1.5.<br />
228